Voice Over Internet Protocol (or VoIP as it’s commonly know) is exactly as the name suggests – Internet telephony. But what exactly does VoIP do and how does it differ from normal landlines?
Voice Over Internet Protocol (or VoIP as it’s commonly know) is exactly as the name suggests – Internet telephony. But what exactly does VoIP do and how does it differ from normal landlines?
“VoIP stands for Voice over Internet Protocol and allows you to make telephone calls using the Internet or other computer networks. VoIP converts the voice signal from your telephone into a digital signal that travels over the internet then converts it back at the other end so you can speak to anyone with a regular Telephone.”
“SIP stands for ‘The Session Initiation Protocol’ and is an application-layer control (signalling) protocol for creating, modifying, and terminating sessions with one or more participants. These sessions include Internet telephone calls, multimedia distribution, and multimedia conferences.
It is widely used as signalling protocol for Voice over IP, along with H.323 and others. SIP is addressing neutral, with addresses expressed as URL/URL’s of various types, such as H.323 address, E.164 telephone numbers or email like addresses.”
“H.323 is an umbrella recommendation from the ITU-T, that defines the protocols to provide audio-visual communication sessions on any packet network.
It is currently implemented by various Internet real-time applications such as NetMeeting and Ekiga (the latter using the OpenH323 implementation). It is a part of the H.32x series of protocols which also address communications over ISDN, PSTN or SS7. H.323 is commonly used in Voice over IP (VoIP, Internet Telephony, or IP Telephony) and IP-based videoconferencing. Its purpose is thus similar to that of the Session Initiation Protocol.”